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smt88

When companies can't grow by competing, they monopolize, buy govt officiala, and acquire competitors.

Apple isn't the best in any category anymore, so they have to cheat.

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I'd argue the practice of Apple, Google et al is still "growing by competing".

Without regulation on what defines acceptable competition, everything is acceptable competition.

There is regulation on what defined acceptable competition.

Yes. By not regulating it, existing regulation defines the current behavior as acceptable competition.

The EU is in progress of updating these terms, no longer accepting the practice of "silos" which hinder consumers from moving freely as acceptable competition, which is the root of all this drama.

Not the best in _any_ category? Really? Not in a single one? Do you have any evidence for this?

At least when it comes to phones Samsung phones are actually better. Better screens, better camera. But Apple has the branding and other options are frowned upon. At least in the US, outside Android is the leader.

As an Android user, yes Samsung has the superior HW like display and stuff, but Apple leads on SW, simplicity and ecosystem. If you already own a Mac computer then the choice is a slam dunk in favor of buying an Apple phone as well. There's no 1:1 equivalent ecosystem for PC/Android even though apps that replicate certain functions of the ecosystem exist: KDE Connect, Microsoft PhoneLink, Samsung whatever, they can never match what Apple does since neither of them owns the full SW & HW stack across phones and laptops plus the adjacent services like Music, video streaming, etc. Then there's the network lock-in effect of iMessage, in the US at least.

Samsung's HW and Android implementation and skin, is in many ways superior to Google's Pixel but the overall packaged is hammered thanks to their bloat trying to replace Google's apps with their own offers to replicate Apple's ecosystem but with Samsung apps instead of Google and it ends up with a confusing duplicate mess. Observe:

Google Chrome and Samsung Browser, Google Wallet and Samsung Pay, Google Keep and Samsung Notes, Google Drive and Samsung Cloud, Gmail and Samsung Mail, Google Photos and Samsung Gallery, etc.

Oh, and the "best" part is, the functionality of certain Samsung apps like Pay is region locked for some reason, so in some EU countries like Germany you can end up with Pay refusing to work if you didn't buy it locally(even though this is the EU so region shouldn't matter). So if you buy your Samsung phone online from some small retailer running a sale you need to make sure the retailer is selling the right SKU for your region otherwise you can end up with Pay refusing to work with some obscure error. Thanks Samsung, great UX. The EU should look into this and maybe fine them as well.

iPhones have better CPU/GPUs though.

Customers don't care who has a better CPU or GPU. They care that the phone does what they want and gives them a good experience. Not saying the GPU or GPU doesn't affect that, but I think we're to the point where phone performance (at least at the higher end, where both Samsung and Apple live) isn't much of an issue anymore.

Having a better screen and camera, like GP points out? Yeah, that's something actually important to customers.

> Customers don't care who has a better CPU or GPU. They care that the phone does what they want and gives them a good experience.

So they don’t pick apple because it has a better CPU or GPU. They pick it because it gives them a superior experience and does what they want.

Usually you don't know what is the experience before buying. Most people buy expensive things primarily out of network effect and or influence by marketing and person of relevance.

And I don't mean this as to diminish iphones usage experience or capabilities. It is the same for people buying one of those über expensive Samsung folding phones, cars, clothing or the latest Thermomix.

Except those of us who don't pick Apple because it doesn't give us what we think of as a superior experience and doesn't do what we want.

It is a whole package that creates a different experience. And customers are not one thing. There are different stuff that different groups may prioritise, and not all care about "better screen". For example, people may go for lower resolution screens because they prioritise batteries. And cameras nowadays are much more than purely hardware. Having better processing hardware and OS results in a phone that can last better and longer for instance, and this is a strength of iphones.

I can't stand Android compared to iOS. I buy Apple stuff despite their corporate shenanigans. But Google and Microsoft are just worse. I also use Linux a lot in embedded and server roles, but in daily interaction, for now, a MacBook and an iPhone it is.

There might be more people thinking like you than other way around... in America. But I bet in Europe it's the opposite: More people can't stand iOS compared to Android. (I'm one of those.)

Also, Europe is more price sensitive.

Raw specs mean nothing. You can throw 16GB RAM at an Android, and for some reason it can still be perceived to be slower than a 4GB RAM iPhone. Likewise, MKBHD has given iPhone the best overall camera system award many times now, simply because the results are so much more consistent as well as being the best in taking videos.

> Really? Not in a single one?

Really. At least they're not the clear favorite. It's not like 2010 when the best phone and laptop hardware was clearly, indisputably Apple.

Samsung phone hardware is better, vanilla Android is better than iOS (ex: recent HN threads raging about iOS not even having schedule-to-send for SMS), many laptops are better than MacBooks or are at least very competitive.

M3 chips are be the best laptop silicon available, but I don't think the average consumer knows/cares much about that.

> Do you have any evidence for this?

It's an opinion, so no.

Which company makes better laptops than Apple?

Lenovo, Dell and others. Because they make laptos with matte screens.

That's a bit of hyperbole, matte screens doesn't make a laptop better, it's a preference.

Same as a better battery life, number of ports, keyboard layout/feel, anything else.

The whole package is just a sum of what fits anyone's requirements / preferences.

In that sense any discussion of a "better laptop" is nonsensical if it's only matters of preference and no agreed upon objective metrics to be based on :)

Well, it's sufficient to point out that for some people, other manufacturers make better laptops than Apple.

They do if you dare to use your laptop in a brightly lit room or ... shudder ... on a balcony/porch outside. Even if it's shaded.

The problem is you have to run Windows, and while Apple is starting to go nuts with their OS, Microsoft is still outdoing them in the insanity department.

I'm just setting up a new win 10 install for development... takes longer to disable the spam and upsells than to set up the actual project.

A) Can't you run a Linux OS?

B) Use ShutUp10 to automate the cleansing process.

heise.de in the past did some tests and measured the contrast ratio on a glossy screen at the point of reflection and, if my memory serves me well, they measured a 10:1 contrast ratio. That is by all standards not good.

IOW are you arguing that it is a preference that you can guarantee you never have a working environment with reflecting lights in your screen?

For those who aren't aware, Heise Verlag is a German publisher with several top computer magazines, notably biweekly c’t with a circulation of 270.000 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/C't

Media looks worse on matte screens.

...it depends?

You’re being downvoted because no one has a valid answer other than their opinion. Manufactures have spent years trying to copy Apple enough to build a better laptop and so far have failed.

It depends on individual requirements. Most Apple laptops have better battery life than all of my laptops, but current ones have less memory available to run virtual machines unless I pay a huge premium which raise would raise the price 7 x over what I paid for my current Thinkpad E580. Also the later has a matte screen which I can't have on a Macbook nor can they fold like my Lenovo Yoga to be used as a tablet and drawing board.

If I was travelling a lot and spending a lot of time outside home I guess the battery life would trump any other factor and it would be a better option. In my case this is not a deciding factor as my laptops spend most of their time at home and as long as battery last a couple a few hours they will be plugged before it gets empty. I still benefit from the laptop form factor as I can still move them from one room to another easily or use them outdoor.

Besides premium price + sustained higher price in the second hand market make it so that at an average of around 350€ the cumulative price of all the computers (5) in my household is lower than the asking price of a single Macbook Pro with only 8GB of memory and a single 1TB hard drive.

It's quite a requirement that to be considered overall best, a product must be best at every conceivable niche. You wouldn't disqualify Lionel Messi from consideration of being the world's best football player by saying that he is (probably) not a very good goalkeeper? Not to say that a MacBook is the Lionel Messi of laptops, but just that a laptop can overall best, while also being a bad fit for a particular role.

I also think price while obviously relevant when it comes to a purchasing decision, is irrelevant when talking about which product is better. To determine which tool is best for hammering nails, it's irrelevant that a rock is cheaper than a hammer. The only relevant criteria is which you would pick if you were free to choose. And, it would frankly be strange if the better product weren't also the more expensive product.

My personal opinion is that Apple has been killing it with their laptops since the introduction of the first M1 MacBook Air. This seems to also be the universal sentiment in the Apple community. I'm aware of no product in the PC space that seem so universally acclaimed, let alone could plausibly serve as basis for a claim that Apple is somehow behind in this category.

> I also think price while obviously relevant when it comes to a purchasing decision, is irrelevant when talking about which product is better.

Well, a brazing toch is certainly a better and more precise tool to apply a flame and heat stuff, but this is not the device you would choose primarily to lit a cigarette.

> And, it would frankly be strange if the better product weren't also the more expensive product.

It happens in a lot of domains.

> This seems to also be the universal sentiment in the Apple community.

Well, it would be stupid to buy and continue using something you don't like no?

A Macbook air or Macbook Pro surely fill a lot of checkboxes for a majority of the population. Having said that, the very fact that the macbook is offered in 3 different forms factor shows that you cannot really define any clear winner anyway. A Microsoft Surface is probably (haven't tested personnally) both an inferior tablet and an inferior laptop to the iPad and macbook air respectively, but it might still be a much better option for someone who fit the need for a 2-in-1. There are other better options for people who want to have a gaming laptop and don't want to rely on a cloud gaming subscription. And in my opinion, and until Asahi linux experience is more polished, running a MacOS desktop immediately dismiss any macbook at being the best laptop.

> Well, a brazing toch is certainly a better and more precise tool to apply a flame and heat stuff, but this is not the device you would choose primarily to lit a cigarette.

Yeah well, saw that often enough when I was young... ;-)

When the brazing torch is the tool you already have in your hand and is already lit, it's definitely the best tool to light your cigarette, too.

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